


Black-Eyed Susans

by AllennellA



Category: Free!
Genre: Depression, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:17:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2043972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllennellA/pseuds/AllennellA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aiichirou is drowning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black-Eyed Susans

**Author's Note:**

> This is set after the end of season one, before season two. I haven't actually seen any of season two, so... I must add a warning that this could very possibly trigger someone. Please, read at your own discretion.

Aiichirou is drowning.

He is small, lithe, with big lungs and an even bigger self-esteem complex.  He knows he is obnoxious and obtrusive; not many people enjoy his presence.

This does not explain why he is drowning.

He is drowning himself in the bathtub, face submerged and holding his breath in an attempt not to get up.  Blood is dripping from his thighs and staining the linoleum floor, the color drying from red to brown.

He is drowning.  Nitori can't do it, can't hold his head down long enough, and so he plunges up, his lungs inhaling loudly and desperately.

He coughs, sputters, water splattering the floor and the blood too.  Shame, Aiichirou thinks, to wash away the blood.  It is his evidence.  His attention.

His precious roommate sleeps away under an empty bunk.  He does not want to wake him.

Aiichirou picks up the scissors from the floor, holding them out, thinking about how, if he plunges them into his leg, he'll die.

He doesn't do it, he puts them back down softly on the edge and peers at the door, criticizes himself.  He can't go back out there now.  There's blood and water to sop up off the floor and a bathtub to drain.

His roommate will surely notice, even if he cleans it all up carefully.

He feels like fainting instead.  His blood is still dripping steadily out from his thighs, and he is lightheaded and dizzy.  He thinks he may faint.

This isn't really the time to faint.  He should probably clean up the blood; Matsuoka-senpai didn't like blood, or so Aiichirou thought. He always got really stiff when he saw it and his nostrils twitched funny.

He wants to say something.  Call for help because he feels too sick to move.

He doesn't.  He feels elated.  He may not be drowning, but he's still dying, right?  It's still the end he wants, so why is his heart pounding and his voice hitching in his throat and a scream coming out from his vocal cords and his eyes blinded and covered in spots--

And then everything is black.

* * *

Rin doesn't cry at the hospital.  He doesn't cry holding a bouquet of dumb flowers that are wilting at the sides.  He doesn't need to.

Everyone else is.

Mikoshiba is crying so hard that he's gone through ten Kleenex boxes.  A bunch of first years Rin has never met are sobbing heavily and choking out how wonderful a person Nitori Aiichirou was and how beautiful he was and how it wasn't necessary.

Rin will not cry until the machine flatlines and his roommate is dead, instead of dying.  He knows what the doctors said, but he does not believe it.  He is not himself if he is not unrealistically ambitious and hopeful.  If he could choose right now, Rin thinks, he would rather be realistic like Mikoshiba, but instead he has one hand gripping cold, unresponsive fingers and the other tapping away at his phone, reading his text messages.

_"Rin where r u we were supposed to go swim" - Makoto Tachibana_

Rin doesn't feel like typing anything back.  He squeezes Nitori's hand gently, rubbing circles into it as he feels the boy's frantic heartbeat under his thumb, hears the machine beep in time with it.

The doctor walks in, asks if any of them have donor cards, asks if any of them are willing to donate blood.

Rin has a donor card; the blood drive was two months ago and Nitori himself had dragged him there, proclaiming how important it was to be a big part of society and improvement.  Digging out his wallet, Rin remembers Nitori's blood type, he remembers that Nitori was happy that they had the same.

Mikoshiba loudly volunteers to donate, but Rin holds out his donor card quietly and the doctor picks him instantly, seeing as he is perfect, an AB positive to an AB positive. 

He's happy, for a moment, squeezing Nitori's hand one last time and allowing the doctor to set him up in a chair, a machine buzzing and ready to pump out all his blood.  A nurse comes with a needle, pulling Rin's elbow out awkwardly and stabbing him in cleanly, almost painlessly.  He doesn't like needles but he can survive them, and he knows Nitori is deathly afraid of them.  The doctors will stab him with a needle in only a few moments, and Rin is grateful that Nitori is so comatose that nothing can wake him.

Rin closes his eyes, his heart pounding.

He doesn't want Nitori to die.  He wants to find a large number of pillows to snuggle under, Nitori tucked next to him, and with hot chocolate with marshmallows and sprinkles and whipped cream in their hands.  He wants to have Nitori laying on top of his bare skin, chests touching, hands in each other's hair, kissing.

This is an impossible dream, and he knows it, and he wants it like nothing before.

Rin watches as they drain his blood.  Red, red, red, Rin thinks, and he suddenly starts feeling a bit tired.

"--Rin-chan!!" he hears, and he knows it's Nagisa.  He hears a pattering of footsteps, enough to be five people.

Rin knows that his sister and the Iwatobi Swim Club have come looking for him.

Gou is the first to come close, to ask what's wrong with him.

Rin can only shake his head, his voice gone.  It has been gone.  It's hoarse and broken from screaming for help, begging for an ambulance to hurry up, pleading with Nitori to _wake up, please for the love of god, wake up, I don't know how to live without you, **you can't die, stay with me--!**_

Rin pulls his sister close with his free hand and holds his head to her stomach, asking to be held in return.

"Rin-chan?  What's wrong?"

The doctor returns to remove the needle; he hears the question and says what Rin cannot, "It looks as if his friend won't make it.  This blood transfusion may not do enough to save him,"

Nagisa gasps, Gou's hold tightens, the other three stand in silent shock.  Rin shudders, holding in tears he swears he will not shed, not this day.

Rin motions to the doctor, trying to ask if he can leave, and the doctor doesn't answer, just let's them all walk out.  He doesn't waste his seconds, he heads straight back to the room in which Nitori lay coldly, silently.

Rin retakes his chair by the bed, drinks some of the water he had bought from the hospital vending machine, and he turns to look at Makoto and Haru and Nagisa and Rei and Gou, and he wants to cry.

"What happened?  A car accident?" Makoto asked.

Mikoshiba, who could still talk, answers, "Attempted suicide.  He... cut himself, on his major arteries in his legs, and then tried to drown himself in the bathtub,"

Rin must make a sound because suddenly Gou is holding him as he tried to steady his breathing.  She's stroking his nose to calm him down, it works only too well.

"Matsuoka found him blacked out in the bathroom, bleeding all over the floor.  Last night," Mikoshiba continues, quieter, "he calls an ambulance, we bandage him up as best as possible, we wait and Rin... wouldn't stop screaming,"

Rin takes a deep breath, trying to forget.

"The doctors said that much more blood loss and he'd be dead.  As it is, he needed fifty stitches to close up his cuts, and who knows if-- if he'll even make it..."

"He has to," Rin croaks, clawing at Gou's shirt, "He has to,"

"Right, our Nitori's a fighter," Mikoshiba cheers awkwardly.  It doesn't help the tension.

Nagisa holds Nitori's other hand in both his own, whispering, "You can do it,"

They stay there into the night, until visiting hours are over.  


* * *

Nitori does not wake up.  The doctors call it a coma, say that he will wake up soon, say they don't understand why he is not waking up yet.

Rin does not know what to do.  He brings a new bouquet of flowers each time he comes.  The nurse sneezes sometimes from all the pollen.  Rin does not sneeze, nor does he cease bringing flowers.

Sometimes elaborate flowers, ones that Gou giggles and tells him mean confessions of love and protection, arranged with a careful hand.  The florist knows him well.  She sees his eyes and he tries his best to convey what he wants to say today.

He always asks, in all of his flower messages, to have Black-eyed Susans.  Happy flowers, he says, and the florist laughs at him.  Rin desperate wants Nitori to wake up and be happy.

Rin understands suicide.  He understands blood dripping down his wrists until he felt dizzy, he understood it all.  Nitori should not understand it.  Rin now wonders if every smile was a lie.

Rin plays music when he visits, plugging in one headphone to Nitori's ear and another in his own, quiet listening together.  The nurse says Nitori can hear everything fine, so Rin talks to him.  Endlessly, sometimes.

Nitori does not wake up today, and so Rin leaves the hospital late, defeated.  Tomorrow he will be back with more Black-eyed Susans and music and stories.

* * *

It has been a month.  Rin can't take it.  He has switched schools to Iwatobi, just so he can be a dark shadow over his old friends and his sister; he can't take going to Samezuka without Nitori.  


  
He knows he'll regret it when Nitori has nothing to wake up to but everyone else understands.  Nitori's things in their old shared room were shipped back to the boy's grieving family.

Rin knows Nitori-otou-san and Nitori-obaa-san well; they visit almost as often as he does.  Rin knows the hospital staff just as well.  Nitori's doctor is Hajima-sensei, who has three young daughters and a loving wife named Kikyo.  Nitori's main nurse is Sato Ryouta, and his other nurses that show up to check in on him are Sameda Yukiko and Touya Tatsumi.

Rin knows that Nitori is not waking up. A self-imposed coma, Hajima-sensei speculates, from which the boy does not wish to wake.  He is scared, maybe, traumatized.  Rin holds the scared boy's hand in his own sweaty one and waits.

And waits.

It has been two months.  It is now cold, winter chilling the air.

Rin replaces his last set of Black-eyed Susans.  The florist is Yumiya Nori, and a older lady in her fifties.  She is kind.  She knows who the boy all these flowers are going to.  She knows him through pictures, both in and out of the hospital.  She knows him as Rin holds onto her as an anchor in a sea of despair, his eyes dry but his chest heaving with sobs.

She has begun to charge him less and sometimes not at all, if he has been sobbing.  He is her best customer.

Rin leaves her soon after he is done purchasing his flowers, two months in a row straight, even on weekends, and walks to the hospital.

The place knows him, doesn't question him, let's him travel to Nitori's room in silence.

Today he looks beautiful.  Rin appreciates what he can get, and he kisses his roommate's nose gently, placing the flowers in a vase, barely fitting with all the others.  Sometimes they don't fit at all, but on Tuesdays Ryouta will take out the older ones and there will be room.

The first set of black-eyed susans was planted when they grew roots and were blooming on the windowsill.

"You've gotten kissy, Matsuoka," an unexpected voice says, and Rin whips around, staring down the red-headed old swim captain.

"Mikoshiba-san," Rin acknowledges, pulling out his chair.  It was his chair because he had laid claim to it.  It is where he did his homework, waiting for his friend to come back.

"You have been coming here still?" Mikoshiba wonders aloud, looking at the new flowers in the vase.

Rin stiffens, "Every single day,"

"You love him," Mikoshiba realizes, and Rin realizes it a moment after.

_Yes,_ Rin thinks, _I do.  There is nothing I want more than for him to wake up._  


* * *

When he beats Haru easily in a swim, Makoto pulls him aside.

"Rin, you are killing yourself,"

"I know," and he isn't lying.  He is killing himself on purpose.  Eating is without desire, without hunger, and sleep is for the weak.  Rin wants to die.

Rin wants to join Nitori, to lay forever on the bed next to his.

Makoto curses, calls Haru over to talk sense into him.  Nagisa and Rei offer their expertise and Haru's soft words don't sink in.

Rin feels water drip down his cheeks, "They're going to unplug him if he doesn't wake up soon."

"...Rin, you can't do this to his memory, he loved you," Makoto argues, Nagisa and Rei nod in agreement.

Haru holds out his arms silently, and Rin falls into them.  He cries until he cannot move, until Makoto and Haru carry him home awkwardly, until they all curl up under a big comforter and Rin does not remember his bravado.

"They're going to kill him," Rin whispers, his head on Gou's lap.

"He'll wake up," Gou reassures, strokes his hair, "He'll wake up tomorrow or the day after and they'll have no choice but to keep him on life support,"

Rin wants nothing more.  


* * *

Rin goes to visit for the last time.  A whole bouquet of black-eyed susans are nestled in his arms.  He is sad, heart grieving and tears burning the back of his sore eyes.

Rin hopes to see Nitori miraculously move, show signs of life, show proof of how his heart is still faintly beating under his skin, so that the machines slowly disappearing from the room are kept there, so that he has more time in this familiar chair with this familiar hand--smooth, soft, cold, he knows it as well as his own--clasped in his own.

They've ceased to keep him fed or hydrated, and the heart pump system that keeps him alive is being unplugged this evening.  If he moves, that all will change.

Nitori does not move.  He has not moved for a long time, his last few hopeful twitches about a month back, Rin gripping his hand and begging the boy to just wake up.

Today Rin sings.  He sings soft lullabies that have no name, tunes that float aimlessly through the air.

They remind him of his father; this whole affair does.  His father drowned at sea and they never recovered him, but Rin is reminded of tears and a dead feeling inside, an acceptance of his failure and his horrible impediment on his father's dream... His dream, now, but back then he felt how unworthy he was and now... Now he remembers what it is like to feel like a killer, a dream-ruiner, a parasite.

Nitori maybe hears the songs, he never made a motion to show he ever did, but Rin holds on to the hope that the silver-haired boy can hear him.

Rin whispers, "I really loved you,"

Somehow saying it in the past sounds better than if he said it in the present.

The boy does not wake, he does not move, he does not live.  Rin tries to hold onto that cold hand once again and finds it is impossible, that he cannot.  He leaves, early for the first time, unable to bear it.  


* * *

Aiichirou hears crying, talking, yelling screaming.  He does not open his eyes.  He does not want to.  The yelling gets louder, close to his ear, and he wants to scream.

He finds he can't.  He can't move, nearly at all.

He lets his eyes open, desperate even just to glare at whoever is screaming at him.  He has been sleeping; he does not want to wake up.

He wakes up anyway.

There are his parents, they are crying, there is Mikoshiba, who is yelling, and a man in black he does not know.

He does not see Rin; where is his roommate?  Maybe his roommate doesn't care, just like Aiichirou suspected.

The man in black speaks quietly, yet the rest of the room is completely silent when he does, and even though Aiichirou knows he should hear the sounds of Mikoshiba and his parents, he only hears a dull hush of them, easily drowned out.

"Hello, Aiichirou," The man says, folding his hands together, "I've come to take you,"

"Take me where," Aiichirou manages to say, "Where are we going?"

"I suppose you are confused," The man says, his eyes completely covered by his big black hat, "but there is nothing to be scared of."

Aiichirou leans up, as best as he is able, "I'm not scared-- who are you, again?"

The man chuckles, "Ahh, youth."

Aiichirou waits for the man to explain himself.  He will not go if the man doesn't say his name or at least his reasons.  He sort of wants to go, his parents have stopped looking happy and Mikoshiba has stopped screaming, so he feels as if they won't mind too much if he leaves.

"I am a guide, I take lost people to new places," the man drums his fingers together, "You are lost, and I need to bring you away from here.  You have spent too long here.  I'll give you two choices... Walk back on your own, or let me guide you onwards."

"I don't want to be alone," he admits, trying to move his body the way he wants, "I can't move properly."

"It will be a harrowing journey either way," the man tells him.

"I know," Aiichirou says, and he gets up from his bed.  Or rather, a hospital bed.

The guide offers out his hand, and Aiichirou takes it in his own, gripping it tightly.

"Where are we going?" Aiichirou asks, one last time.

"Away from here," the man doesn't answer, and leads Aiichirou away, into the sudden blinding white light.


End file.
